Final Project Ideas

I think that I am going to do my application project on conducting a series of ESL tutoring sessions and writing a reflection paper on my experiences.  I am doing my TESOL practicum at the moment at Normal Community High School and am very active in the classroom.  So, I "tutor" all the time.  There are students that are from Japan, Guatemala, Mexico, Ethiopia, Dominican Republic, Congo, among a few others.  I didn't think I would enjoy teaching English as a second language as much as I actually do now that I am somewhat in practice.  So, I would love to delve deeper into these experiences and share them.

The Three Models of Curriculum

Just as the three projects were categorized in their organization, these models of curriculum are similar in that each has its own pros and cons.  These seem to develop off one another, which is hopeful to me as a future ESL teacher.  However, I'm not sure that these are that helpful learning about individually because they always leave the reader with questions, wondering what the answer is.  As the author states, he offers a suggestion that "the framework most applicable to ELT today is an integrated approach which is essentially learner-centered and is an attempted 'synthesis of the product-oriented ends-means model and the process-oriented approach'" (74).  This suggestion, the 'New Pragmatism,' is merely a theory, however, and states that it could develop in the future with time.  However, one main point about this is that "in the integrated approach, needs analysis takes place not only at the pre-course planning stage, but also during the course, contributing to the development of teacher-learner negotiated learning objectives" (75).  This would be very beneficial in that it would keep students on track, so that they can scaffold their previous learned knowledge.  Teachers will be able to see what students have difficuly with while doing needs analysis during the course.  I like it!

Questions

Chapter 1

1. Olsen's study is a historical anthropological study of ELL in our classrooms.  It focuses on a California high school.  She takes into account how identity is largely affected by how we view and categorize students by their race, class, language, etc. 
2. Her theoretical background is the Head of California tomorrow.  She attempts to combine racial and economic theories to create a new social theory.  Her definition of schooling focuses on the related issues of language, race, culture, and national identity
3. The research method Olsen utilizes is the ethnic graphic approach.  This observes culture and participating/interviewing the participants. 
4. The participants of the research were 15 faculty/administration members at Madison High, 7 at the Newcomer School (ESL Program), 47 students, and 5 teachers.
5. The central issues/research questions include:
-How did they understand "America?"  What does it mean to be "American?"
-What borders and boundaries did they create or detect in social relations? What language did they use to articulate and create those borders and boundaries?
-How were the crossings, the borderlands and terrain in between languages, cultures, and national identities experienced, shared, contested?
-How did they experience and view their encounters with each other across languages, cultures, and national identies?
-What was it like for those students and teachers who felt themselves involved in forging new terrains of language, culture, racial, and national identity?
-Why were they in school, and how did they experience school? What relationship did school have to the rest of their lives?
6. Olsen kept date through journals, categorizing three different personalities of herself which were the storyteller, the anthropologist, and the advocate.  She also utilized census and school reports. 

 7.
The researcher’s roles were to be the observer.  She viewed participants in the school and in the community.  She wanted to see how students perceived their own education and how this was constructed. 8. The demographics were Demographics: 32.8% white, 26.1% Hispanic, 13.5% African-American, 13.3% Asian, 11.1% Filipino, 2.4% Pacific Islander, and less than 1% Native-American.

Olsen't Chapter 5

In the first few pages, students share accounts of their feelings of being in the United States and their feelings about their home country.  I was so sad to hear some of these.  Sandra, from Brazil, actually sheds tears because she is so homesick and doesn't have a sense of belonging in the U.S.  Her account was beautiful in what she was sharing but very sad to hear.  Hanh, from Vietnam, also feels this.  It was interesting that two students who are so very different related on a level, however.  Hanh shared because she was trying to empathize with Sandra.  What is most bothersome about these is how we are all guilty of categorizing people.  The chapter has a great explanation of it on page 117: What constitutes a pan-Latino population? What is an immigrant need? Do Brazilians and Central AMericans and Mexican newcomers and Chicanos belong in a single category either as immigrants or as Latinos? With what implications? The process ocurring within Madison High and Bayview reflects national trends toward broader racialized categories; and works against the national specificity in the identities that immigrants bring with them.  The process is not, however, without fissures and conflict for the students themselves.

Semistructured Projects

"Semistructured projects are defined and organized in part by the teacher and in part by students" (110).  This is what I plan on utilizing every year in my classroom, when doing projects.  I feel that structured is too one sided towards the teacher's vision and doesn't consider what the students are interested in, what is relevant to them, or what their needs are.  We as teachers in any subject have the responsibility to assess our students' needs, whether that be because they are behind in something, have a disability of some sort, or need more of a challenge.  The structured projects do not do this.  Unstructured, I feel, gives students too much freedom.  They don't always know what is best for themselves, nor what the teacher's objective is, so they could easily miss that and the purpose of the project.  However, it is interesting to think what a very motivated class would do with this, where they would take it and how well they would do on their own.  With this semistructured project, I feel that a performance based project might be the most beneficial to use.  What immediately came to my mind was an experience I had that is a good example of this.  I've had several teachers facilitate debates in the classroom where students are split into two groups that represent a position.  They don't choose the side they are on and must do research on their own representing and supporting their position.  Although they are spitting out statistics and factual information, this process leads to students coming to an understanding of their position, the other side, and the situation as a whole all on their own.  They are able to interpret that information and respond in a debate about a real world situation that is important and relevant to the class.  This teaches students a variety of skills that they are able to get to mostly on their own through the research and debate.  I think this is a great project and will use it in the future.

Communication Strategies

Communication strategies, picked as one of the aspects in the project that was said to promote language acquisition, involves a very active role by the learner.  I know only a few are also in practicum, but I chose this topic for discussion board because we discussed in practicum how ELLs pick up slang and common sayings to fit in, even though they might not know the true meaning.  Communication strategies, such as requests, turn taking, confirmation, etc. are similar to slang in that these are new concepts to ELLs and they are specific to American culture.  They might be used in order to adapt, but they more than likely aren't understood right away and take practice.  The text states that, "The underlying notion is that opportunities to modify and restructure interaction until mutual comprehension is reached are what enable learners to move forward in their interlanguage development" (101-102).  One major aspect about both slang, common sayings, and speech acts such as requests is that "underlying notion" with the goal of "mutual comprehension."  I think that to be able to communicate in the target language is more often the goal when learning another language, more so than for academic reasons, etc.  For this reason, communication strategies is an effective part of teaching, in particular, English as a second/foreign language and would have also been helpful as part of the project. 

Demographic Myths

When reading "Demographic Myths" out of our "Myths and Realities" book, I was surprised by the numbers stated in these.  Percentages only say so much, but when given specific numbers to compare is a reality check.  I knew that the fastest growing group of students in the U.S. today are ELL students, as Demographic Myth # 1 states.  But what I didn't know was exactly how many that meant.  As stated, "More than 5 million ELLs were enrolled in public or nonpublic elementary or secondary schools during the 2003-2004 school year, representing an increase of approximately 2 million ELLs over the past decade (NCELA 2005)."  This directly states that we have 2 million more English language learning students than only a few years ago!  This statistic is exciting but leaves me with questions.  Are we fulfilling their educational needs?  Highly doubtful.  The percentage of functional illiterate high school graduates is very surprising (we were discussing this in another one of my classes) and so this makes me wonder, how many ELL students are out there that are functionally "illiterate" as in they can get by with certain language skills but aren't where they need to be? 

TESOL Practicum

My Cooperating teachers are Anita Claricoates and Annette Jones at Normal Community High School.  They are the only teachers for the TESOL classes there and have 4 levels: Basic, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.  They also do this study hall type class called Resource where the students in their TESOL classes are able to ask them for help with homework from their other classes.  The two teachers co-teach in some subjects to help out with the ESL students, such as in Regional World Studies and Physics.  I will be helping out during classes with students.  My CT's want me to be as active as possible, which is exciting!  I will be going every week during these times:
Monday 7:15-9:30
Wednesday 7:15-9:30
                   11:30-2:30
Friday 7:15-2:30

The End of CLT

I feel that "The End of CLT" was a very biased and opinionated article.  "CLT

has always neglected one key aspect of language teaching—namely the context in which it takes place—and that the consequences of this are serious, to the extent that we need to demote CLT as our main paradigm, and adopt something more similar to what I term a Context Approach."  I really liked learning about the Communicative Language Teaching Approach, and actually didn't feel that it lacked in the importance of context.  I agree that the consequences of not including context are serious, because that delves into how something is more appropriate in this situation rather than that, etc.  However, after reading the article, I don't think I agree with it's position.  I felt that because I support the CLT approach, that I was attacked in the article in some way.  I also thought that it wasn't that effective in that the arguement against CLT was based off of assumptions.  For example, "The learning context may be claimed to be important, but since it is not top of the list of priorities, it is, in practice, considered as of relatively minor importance."  I might be misunderstanding this though!  I understand both approaches, the Context Approach and the Communicative Language Approach, but only in the way that it is portrayed in our previous read articles, not in this one. 

Communicative Language Teaching

I really liked reading this article.  It provided examples of what not to do and was sort of like a FAQ and answered all of my questions in CLT.  It provided several activities that we as future TESOL teachers can utilize.  I think that emphasis on communicative language teaching is the best way to teach a language, "-knowing when and how to say what to whom."  "If teachers intend studentsto use the target language, then they must truly understand all that being communicateively competent entails."  I totally agree with the Communicative Approach in that communicative competence is the goal of language teaching.  I do think that there was a lack of emphasis on being able to use the language academically, being able to read and write in it, etc.  However, I think the most important aspect of learning a language is the communcation aspect.  I particularly liked the section, "Thinking About the Experience" because it broke down what each observation meant and how it should be interpreted in association with the communicative approach to language teaching.  The first observation stated is perhaps one that should be prioritized.  "The teacher distributes a handout that has a copy of a sports column from a recent newspaper."  The principle of this is "Whenever possible, authentic language'-language as it is used in a real context-should be introduced."  The reason I believe this should be prioritized is because of its' relevance to learning another language.  Sometimes, when saying something in another language or translating, words or sayings sound funny.  Especially for me teaching a high school class, students might laugh or joke about it.  This takes away from the learning experience and what they get out of the lesson and what they learn of the language overall.  So, using authentic language would hopefully prevent that and show students real situations where the target language is used; how, when, where, etc. (this shows the context). 

Olsen's Chapter 3

I want to discuss the discussion in the very beginning of chapter 3 in "Made in America."  The teacher asked the students, "If it were up to you, what would you learn in high school that would be useful to you?  What would you be studying?"  As a student, I have also been prompted this in a classroom.  However, the discussion in my classroom went much differently.  A factor I believe that caused a different result was that I went to a private, Catholic, college prep high school.  The discussion in Lisa Stern's world history class started right out with what is offered in terms of ethnic background in order to include certain groups that Tony, a student, felt were left out.  When I have had this question posed to my classroom, my classmates and I had responses that were more along the lines of how we wanted to learn things that we deemed as more relevant to us, or we wanted more of a variety of classes.  We didn't have home economics or pottery, we pretty much just had the basic stuff.  I don't think my experience with this discussion has ever gone as personally as this one did in the book.  My brothers, on the other hand, went to the public school near us where they were the minority; they were typically the only white students in the class.  Having heard their experiences, I believe that this prompt would have gone more similarly to Lisa Stern's class.  Noting these results and comparing them shows all the factors that contribute to a students' learning experiences in a classroom.  Where they go to school is made up of subcategories: class, race, academic successes and failures, etc.  All of these, along with many others, contribute to a student's attitude towards learning in that school.  If we were to address some of these issues, only a few, I wonder how the academic progress would change! 

Critical Approaches to TESOL

This article was definitely dense, as Dr. Seloni said!  I found myself reading sentences over and over again to understand what was stated.  Even so, I really liked how this focused on such abstract ideas.  I liked the critical view of social and political relations, particularly class, power, and inequality.  Language is so closely tied into one's culture, and then several subcategories under that, that it would only make sense in effective teaching of ESL to take into consideration these elements (social and political, etc.).  Gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic background are also major elements to include in the critical view of TESOL approaches.  Paulo Freire takes these factors deeper and breaks it down into the oppressed and the oppressors.  In terms of pedagogy, Freire has a concept of conscientization, described as "A first step in critical work may therefore be to develop an awareness of the issues; nothing will change unless people know things need to ('if it ain't broken, don't fix it').  I think that especially in a TESOL environment, these factors need to be made aware of personally (our own possible biases) and among students.  We must be careful in that this awareness fosters respect in the classroom, however. 

The Role of the Teacher

Kuma's Chapter 1: Conceptualizing Teaching Acts really grabbed my attention in the section The Role of the Teacher.  I've wanted to become a teacher for everything noted under this section, "The teacher has been variously referred to as an artist and an architect; a scientist and a psychologist; a manager and a mentor; a controller and a counselor; a sage on the stage; a guide on the side; and more... Each of them captures the teacher's role partially but non of them fully" (Kuma 6).  As I read through how teachers are as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, and transformative intellectuals, I found myself critiquing each role as well as considering how I want to be as a teacher.  When I first began reading teachers as passive technicians, it didn't seem so ineffective as it actually is.  I liked the description how teachers are to act "like a conduit, channeling the flow of information from one end of the educational spectrum (i.e., the expert) to the other (i.e., the learner)..." (Kuma 8).  However, the flaws in this role are that the teacher is "prescribed" information.  I continued to read the next role of teachers as reflective practitioners and wrote down a few books that were referenced by John Dewey and Don Schon because I was agreeing so much with these views.  "Reflective teaching, then, is a holistic approach that emphasizes creativity, artistry, and context sensitivity" (Kuma 10).  This was very defining to me as a teacher in training.  However, the flaws of course were pointed out and I then agreed with the role of teachers as transformative intellectuals.  This role intimidated me because, just as it's described in the chapter, it's "such a radical role assigned to teachers" (Kuma 13).  I found myself unsure of which role I identified with most but was reassured at the end of this section with the statement, "It is useful to treat the three perspectives not as absolute opposites but as relative tendencies, with teachers leaning toward one or the other at different moments" (Kuma 17).

Made in America

I really like this book.  It's easy to read and really an inspiration.  It has facts and numbers, but that actually helps the story, as opposed to making it more difficult to follow or imply things.  On top of that, the history is what we are learning from.  I've learned theories in Second Language Teaching and such, but I haven't read about methods and theories, etc. as a story to benefit us as future ESL teachers.  This is how all history books should be written!  On page 36, I really like this quote included in the Madison yearbook: "DIVERSITY.  Diversity is not just a word, but a word that symbolizes the different types of backgrounds of teachers and students that we have here at Madison."  The chapter goes on to discuss issues of identity on page 39, "Can I be American and still be me?"  I can't imagine this as something to deal with, or how difficult that must be.  This book really is eye opening and I'm happy to continue reading.

Language Teaching Approaches

I really liked learning about the history of language teaching.  The article states that, "one reason for the frequent changes that have been taking place until recently is the fact that very few language teachers have even the vaguest sense of history about their profession and are unclear concerning the historical bases of the many methodological options they currently have at their disposal."  This was a great point.  I never actually thought about how important the history of language teaching is.  The article goes on to state how there before 2000, there were two approaches to languag teaching: using language and analyzing language (which focuses on grammar and we know how well that goes).  While in many of my TESOL classes, we've learned about English as lingua franca.  I thought it was interesting to hear about Greek and then Latin as the lingua francas during the Classical Greek and Medieval periods.  I think that some of the reasons that people learned these two languages can be similar to some of the reasons proposed to use Standard English; politics, business, philosophy and religion.  The educated became fluent in these languages, which is also what Standard English is known to be used by.  The Direct Method, having the goal as to use the language rather than analyze it, seems so obvious to me (for that to be the goal).  I can't imagine learning a language just so that I could analyze it.  There were so many contributions from several different people to spread this method that I was amazed.  It seems like this method was the one to start the major changes in language teaching, which I can probably say for all of us, we're grateful for.